Penicillin

More than a dozen Botox users and relatives filed a lawsuit Wednesday contending that the blockbuster wrinkle-buster injured them or killed their relatives, and they blamed maker Allergan Inc. for failing to warn them of the dangers. The suit, filed in Orange County Superior Court near Allergan's Irvine headquarters, links the toxin-based drug to three deaths, including one in March of a 69-year-old Texas nurse who received injections for neck and shoulder pain.

As a child and in my adolescence, living in the heart of New York's Neapolitan ghetto, I never heard an Italian singing. None of the grown-ups I knew were charming or loving or understanding. Rather they seemed coarse, vulgar and insulting. And so later in my life when I was exposed to all the cliches of lovable Italians, singing Italians, happy-go-lucky Italians, I wondered where the hell the moviemakers and storywriters got all their ideas from.

About 70 medical vials that have washed ashore on San Diego County beaches in the past two days may contain penicillin, health officials said Monday. "The white or yellowish-white powder looked outdated," said Gary Stephany, environmental health director for the county Department of Health Services. "It looked like the type of medicine someone just tossed in the ocean, although I hope no one tossed it there. It appears to be the same substance that washed up on beaches two years ago.

Andrew Phillip Cunanan was nursing a stomach wound before his suicide and investigators believe he may have been wounded in one of the five murders he's suspected of committing. Police found bloody bandages, cotton swabs, gauze pads and penicillin pills in the Miami Beach houseboat where Cunanan ended his life with a gunshot to the head July 23. Cunanan, 27, was the prime suspect in the point-blank slaying of fashion designer Gianni Versace July 15 in Miami Beach, along with four other

Teen-agers are having more sex despite government warnings of the danger of getting the deadly AIDS virus, U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop said today. "We do know that teen-agers are not listening," Koop said on ABC's "Good Morning America." He said that infectious syphilis and penicillin-resistant gonorrhea spread faster in 1987 than at any other time in 16 years and that 3 of every 1,000 college students tested positive for AIDS, according to a study this year.

Led by the Center for Science in the Public Interest, 37 health and consumer groups petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of seven antibiotics in livestock, saying the practice poses a potential threat to human health. The drugs the groups want banned are penicillin, tetracycline, erythromycin, tylosin, lincomycin, virginiamycin and bacitracin.

Newborns should be tested for sickle cell anemia regardless of race, and children with the disease should take preventive doses of penicillin until they are five, the U.S. Public Health Service advised doctors. Though both recommendations are already widely followed, universal acceptance will further reduce complications from the inherited blood disease, a new report said. Sickle cell anemia occurs in 1 of 375 American blacks, and in a much lower frequency in other racial groups.

The Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center alerted county health officials Friday that it has administered the wrong type of penicillin to about 300 people seeking treatment for syphilis over the past five years. Penicillin therapy is the mainstay of treatment for syphilis, according to county health officials, but different formulas exist. Clients at the Gay & Lesbian Center were treated with Bicillin C-R instead of Bicillin L-A, the trade name for benzathine penicillin G.

June 14, 2010 | By Ken Ellingwood and Cecilia Sanchez, Los Angeles Times

The instructions aren't on any box of medicine, but Mexicans know them all the same: At the first sign of sore throat or fever, race to the pharmacy for antibiotics. Take as you see fit. Even though the law requires a prescription for antibiotics, pharmacists in Mexico seldom ask for one before handing them over. And they hand them over by the boatload: nearly 2 billion doses of antibiotics a year, enough for two full courses of treatment for almost each of the nation's 110 million people.